was a laptop on the desk, but when he checked, it was off, and the battery had gone dead.
He moved into the bedroom, and the first thing he saw was her purse sitting on the bench at the foot of her bed. He looked inside, and when he realized everything she would have carried was still in it—her wallet, her ID, credit cards, car keys, sunglasses, even makeup—his heart skipped a beat. No woman willingly left all of this behind. Now he was getting concerned.
He went straight to the big walk-in closet. It didn’t take but a few moments to notice there were no empty hangers to indicate she’d packed clothes. There was no sign of a struggle or any kind of abduction. She was just gone.
Eric was still in her bedroom when he called Blaine. He must have been waiting for the call because he answered on the first ring.
“This is Blaine.”
“It’s me, Eric. I’m in her apartment, and I don’t really know what to tell you except that she’s not here. There’s food in her refrigerator that has molded. The milk is out of date almost two months. The laptop in her office is off, and when I tried to turn it on, the battery was dead. I’m standing in her bedroom right now, and her purse is here with her wallet, money, credit cards, and ID still in it. Her car keys are in it. I checked her closet. There’s no sign of her packing any clothes because there are no empty hangers. It’s as if she just vanished. Do you want me to call the police?”
Blaine’s heart skipped a beat. He knew exactly what she’d done. The bitch! She’d walked away from it all to get away from him, and he’d never seen it coming.
“No. Let me do some more checking first, and for now, let’s keep this between us.”
“Yes, sir,” Eric said. “So, I’ll just lock it back up as if I was never here. Her lease is paid up until May of next year anyway.”
“Thank you again,” Blaine said, but he was cursing a blue streak by the time he disconnected.
The last confirmation he needed would be to check the damn bank account. They wouldn’t tell him where they’d moved money, but he could find out if the account was still active. He just needed to find the right person. Someone with access to viewing those accounts surely needed a little extra something. He banked there as well, and had seen a couple of bank employees regularly in the casinos in which he was invested. If they liked to gamble, he had a feeling they wouldn’t turn down the money to snoop.
* * *
It cost Blaine five thousand dollars to get the info he wanted about Cathy’s checking account. There was less than two hundred thousand dollars left, which was more than enough for the automatic withdrawals for her utility bills until her lease ran out. But since she’d left all her credit cards behind, they were useless in trying to trace her.
Now he had to decide if he wanted to just kiss her absent ass goodbye and consider he’d won by running her out of town, or if she was too much of a threat. But that was for another time. Right now, he was doing lunch with an associate, then going from there to the board meeting being held at the Luxor, so he slid into the back seat of his limo, closed the window between him and his driver, and made a call to a brunette named Angel.
He smiled when she answered. “Hello, big boy. You’re back. I have missed you and your hot body so much,” she said, and then made a little purring sound that raised the hair on the back of his neck.
“Missed me enough to go to dinner with me tonight?” he asked.
“Ooh, yes, baby. And do I get to spend the night? You know how I love waking up next to you.”
“Absolutely,” Blaine said. “I’ll pick you up at seven. I have dinner reservations at Joel Robuchon’s at the Grand for seven thirty.”
“Oh yum. You spoil me,” Angel said.
Blaine laughed. “See you then,” he said, and disconnected.
* * *
Duke and Jack were back at the scene of the crime, with Deputies Treat and Butler from the County Sheriff’s office. Butler was taking pictures of the tire tracks and had made a plaster cast of the boot print with the cut in the left heel. They had